Sochi starts electoral campaign of City Mayor

The city of Sochi (Krasnodar Territory) has launched its electoral campaign of the Mayor, towards the election to take place on April 26. The City Electoral Commission (CEC) will stop receiving documents from candidates for the Mayor of Sochi on March 26, as Yuri Rykov, chairman of the Commission has explained.

On March 2, the CEC considered the action plan on preparation and holding the early election of the Mayor of Sochi. Now, the city has 4 territorial electoral commissions and 210 local ones. The UGA.ru portal reports that as of January 1, 2009, Sochi counts 296,150 voters.

So far, the CEC has received no applications. This electoral campaign will be shorter than the previous one; its term has been shortened by one third. The "Vecherni Sochi" newspaper writes that the law on municipal elections in Krasnodar Territory allows doing it.

As of today, Sochi is governed by Anatoly Pakhomov, Vice-Mayor, who was appointed Acting Mayor on January 20 and replaced Dzhambulat Khatuov, who became, in his turn, the First Vice-Governor of the Krasnodar Territory.

The investigator, who earlier was in charge of the inquiry into the 2009 murder of the lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova, has been appointed to head the group of investigators to run the inquiry into the murder of politician Boris Nemtsov.

Participants of a picket held in Astrakhan as a part of the all-Russian campaign "Vesna" (Spring), have paid tribute to Boris Nemtsov. They have also expressed their hope that his death will cause the oppositionists to stick together, the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent reports.

During the week from February 23 to March 1, 2015, at least 23 people fell victim to armed conflict in Northern Caucasus. Of them, 17 people were killed and six others wounded. These are the results of the calculations run by the "Caucasian Knot" based on its own materials and information from other open sources.

Relatives of Djabu Magomedov, a resident of the Kizilyurt District, cannot get official information about his whereabouts since February 26. According to a source in the Kizilyurt GOVD (City Interior Department), Djabu Magomedov is suspected of aiding and abetting members of illegal armed formations (IAFs), and he is in Makhachkala.

Today, in Moscow, the mourning procession in memory of murdered politician Boris Nemtsov has gathered 50,000-70,000 people, organizers of the action report. One of the key attributes in the hands of participants of the action was represented by the Russian flag. In this particular case, it symbolized the people of Russia and not the President, said Svetlana Gannushkina, the head of the Committee "Civil Assistance".

On March 1, members of the opposition movements in Rostov-on-Don held a rally in the Sedov city square to pay tribute to the memory of politician Boris Nemtsov murdered a day before. Following the event, the resolution was adopted with the demand for an independent investigation into the murder and the immediate cessation of the war in Ukraine.